DigytaliaJust because you want and/or apply for a patent doesn’t mean that you will automatically get one. You have to prove to the patent examiner at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in Washington, D.C. that you deserve a patent.
For better or for worse, the burden falls entirely on you, the inventor, to clearly communicate the facts about your invention, and the facts about the invention must meet the stringent requirements that the PTO uses to vet patent applications. There are patenting agencies, such as InventHelp patent agency, that could help you out.
The very most important first step an inventor must take is to carefully document their invention. Documentation is key in securing future rights to your clever new idea. The “paper trail” you create about your invention is extremely important and it needs to be kept in an organized, recognized format in order to be most useful and give you the best chance of successfully being granted a patent for your invention.
You will be creating an “Inventor’s Logbook” that forms the basis of your claims of novelty and reduces your idea to practice, a legal term which roughly means being able to demonstrate that your invention actually works.
Your logbook will be like your invention diary. You should journal EVERYTHING you think about and do with your idea – features and functions you envision, who you talk to about the invention, what you do to develop it, etc. Your sketches should be kept in your Inventor’s Logbook as well. The idea is to establish “first” or “primary” claim to the intellectual property your invention represents.
By having all your writing, sketches, and even your messy scribbles carefully and methodically dated and annotated, it makes it much easier for you to establish when your idea was first conceived and that it was you who conceived of it.
Having set up and filled up your Inventor’s Logbook, now you need to decide if the long waits, cost and hassle of obtaining a patent is worth it to you.
There is so much confusion about what patents are, how patents work, what type of patent to apply for, how much patents cost, what patents protect and who enforces the intellectual property (IP) rights a patent may convey.
Fortunately, the smart inventor can avail himself or herself of a plethora of information online about the patent process.
Don’t be intimidated in the beginning by how much you don’t know. It can feel overwhelming and often leads inventors to put thing on the back burner. You can guess what happens to most of those inventions…
Take your time to familiarize yourself with the basics. Learning about patents is not a horse race.
Once you’re comfortable with the concepts involved, you will be able to make smart, rational decisions about the process of applying for a patent for your invention, and feel confident about the choices you’re making and InventHelp will be to guide you. The level of apprehension is pretty high for most new inventors, and understandably so.
